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Piotr Zapadka & Sławomir Niemierka
The European banking system profile - institutional and legal aspects.
The legal system and the organization of the finance market in the European Union
This paper presents the basic principles governing the EU legal system, and specially its finance market.
The Polish law must comply with the EU regulations in line with Poland's international obligations, stemming from the provisions of the Europe Agreement of 16th December 1991. This Act established an association between the European Communities and their Member States, of the one part, and the Republic of Poland, of the other part and began the process of Poland's integration with the EU structures.
Since the European Union does not enjoy an international status and is a sui generis subject of international law, the legal regulations of the EU (thanks to the European Communities functioning within its framework) have only an international dimension and lack the "internal" one. This leads to a duality of the legal regimes, i.e. to the existence of parallel regulations - at EU and domestic levels. Bearing the above in mind, it may be said that the basic feature of the EU legal system is the duality of legal regimes:
- EU regulations of supra-national nature are created in a legal process based on co-operation of all Member States of the EU, which are at the same time members of the European Community. These regulations take precedence over domestic legal systems within individual Member States;
- the domestic law of the individual EU Member States, whose regulations should be in accordance with the European Union law.
The Treaties were discussed as an example of the first category. These are the fundamental legal acts of the EU and contain basic comprehensive guidelines reflecting the economic and social policies of the EU. Next comes the characteristics of Directives. They contain recommendations to be implemented in domestic legal systems of the Member States. Domestic legal systems have been committed to modify their regulations, both those already in force as well as those to take effect, in line with the recommendations of the Directives to achieve the "minimum harmonisation level". As an effect, the regulations adopted in each Member States are uniform to the extent determined in the Directives.
The duality of regimes described in the article refers also to the EU financial market. Entities active on this market have to act in accordance with comprehensive regulations contained in the Treaties, with the legal framework determined in the Directives and with the domestic regulations which should be in accordance with European Union Law.
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